Biography
Jinhee Choi is interested in understanding the molecular mechanism of environmental chemicals-induced toxicity for protection of human and ecosystem health. She did her PhD in Eco-toxicology Lab of University of Paris-Sud (XI), Orsay, France.During her PhD, she conducted multi-bio-marker research in various lab and field scale eco-toxicology projects and identified oxidative stress bio-markers due to chemical exposure in freshwater invertebrates. After her PhD, she did postdoctoral fellowship in Seoul National University, Medical school.
While then she investigated DNA repair mechanism due to oxidative DNA damage in various in-vitro and in-vivo and human biopsy samples. Her PhD and postdoctoral experiences were quite different yet both productive and interlinked and were served as a background for her interdisciplinary research in environmental toxicology.When she established her own lab in University of Seoul, School of Environmental Engineering in 2002, she tried to incorporate her multidisciplinary experiences using different model systems. Her interest lies in systemic understanding of molecular mechanism of toxicity due to environmental chemicals exposure.
For this, she applies multi-OMICS and systems toxicology technologies,which provide unbiased novel information on chemical toxicity and help to develop mechanistic model for toxicity prediction. The ultimate goal of her research is to bridge the gap between mechanistic toxicological research and the development of useful tools for risk assessment. To this end, she leads a research project on development of adverse outcome pathway (AOP) of inhalation toxicity under OECD program. On the other hand, she is also interested in epigenetic mechanism in environmental chemicals -induced toxicity and human disease development.
She conducts environmental epigenetics project also in eco-toxicological contexts, by investigating multi- and trans-generational effect of chronic exposure of chemicals in invertebrates. She has been used various model organisms in human toxicology as well as eco-toxicology contexts and thus her interest naturally lies in cross-species extrapolation of the conserved toxic mechanism. She has been investigated toxicity from various environmental chemicals, with special attention on nano-material’s toxicity. However, as her stressors of interests go beyond chemicals, she recently investigates combined effect of chemicals exposure with physical or biological agents, such as, temperature or microbiome. She is a full professor of School of Environmental Engineering in University of Seoul.